ROME, Italy -- Millions of Italians are scouring rubbish tips, garbage cans and canals for rotten vegetables to throw at their national football team.

After watching their team crash out at the group stage 3-2 to Slovakia in the World Cup , many fans went out to look for over ripe tomatoes, sour milk and mouldy courgettes
in preparation for Italy's team return home. Only four years ago, Italy were the top soccer nation after they won the 2006 World Cup tournament in Germany. Now their mood is very ugly and extreme fans are saying that none of the Azzurri (as the Italian team are known) should be allowed back into the country.

Extra security at all Italian airports has been stepped up in case they receive a bombardment of rotten food in the belief their team were trying to sneak in undetected. However in the past fans of the team have always found ways of getting information. The last time their team for this sort of reception was in 1966 and 1974 when the Italian team failed before.

..this is a black day for Italy, one fan of the Italian team blubbed. We were once admired for skills on the football ground, whether it was playing with the ball or acting out a sordid scene from the Pier Paulo Pasolini film Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (120 Days of Sodding About) , Italy could always find a method to win a game. In 2006 we knew how to get to France's great football star Zinedine Zidane by telling him his sister was a whore...not now.

The Italian team wait to meet their fans inside the Colosseum.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has promised the country that he will take all extreme measures to restore Italian national pride. He has ordered that the Colosseum in Rome install temporary seating and bring in any wild animals that would otherwise have been put down. There Berlusconi hopes this populist move will deflect attention from his earlier boast that the Italian football team were standard bearers for the Italian way of winning and that the slogan 'Forza Italia'. However, Berlusconi also took a swipe at the English referee and his assistants who were in charge of the Italy-Slovakia game and had failed to fix the game in Italy's favour as widely expected. The prime minister said it was all part of a wider British conspiracy involving The Economist magazine, Financial Times and the BBC Sports commentators to accuse Berlusconi of corruption,arrogance and looking archetypically sleazy.

The manager of the Italian team Marcello Lippi has agreed that he was at fault for picking the tea and will be taken to Sicily to enjoy some traditional Mafia hospitality. It is understood his hosts have ordered a roll of black bin bags specially for their invited guest. In a new development, England's Italian born coach Fabio Cappello has been encouraged to leave the World Cup now and manage Italy in time the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship.